Do you know about the Three Sacred Regalia of Japanese tradition? Perhaps you do. Anyway, these are the Kusanagi sword, the Magatama bead and the Yata mirror, the three mystical items supposedly derived from the Yamata-no-Orochi slaughtering by the hands of Susano-ou (same one from ShinOhKen), as told in the Kojiki.

Well, seems that the NeoGeo has not just three, but SIX sacred regalia.

Those are listed in the original flyer for the rental system, the one with Gemant on the cover (four page fold-out flyer).

This flyer lists six 'optional tools' for rental operators/shops:

「ネオ・ジオ」スタンドサイン
「ネオ・ジオ」カウンターサイン
「ネオ・ジオ」プレイトト プレート
「ネオ・ジオ」店横ノボリ
「ネオ・ジオ」レンタルバッグ
「ネオ・ジオ」レンタルソフト(kanji unreadable)

Translation for easy reference:

1) Stand sign
2) Counter sign
3) Plate
4) Shop-front flag
5) Rental bag
6) Rental software display case

Of course, a magical gate will appear if anyone manages to gather all six.

Here they are in as much photographic detail as is available at present:

What I found is that five different NeoGeo Bags exist.

Namely:

1) Unpadded nylon bag, the one $hawn had shitloads of.
2) Half-padded nylon bag, the one advertised as 'proto bag' by Trieu.
3) Blue padded bag.
4) Pink padded bag.
5) Another padded bag with a different size and an external front pocket.

What I discovered *for sure* is that 5) is a UK-made product, created by the UK offcial NeoGeo distributor back around 1993, as advertized in vol. 2 of the UK Neo Geo newsletter.

About the two padded ones: the pink one seems to be a lesser replica of the blue one. Apart from the different colour padding, the pink one is in fact missing internal details (a pocket to correctly house memory cards and hook-ups), plus you will notice the Blue one has multi-coloured logo prints on its front, the Pink one is all-gold print.

According to the souces I tracked down for both, it seems the Blue one is the Japanese one, while the Pink one was sold by SNK of America starting in 1991.

Yet, those padded bags do not match the design sketch I saw on the original 'Rental Bag' flyer, and possibly not even the description of "carrying the system, two joystick, three game carts" given there, as the padded bags seems to have room for four or five game carts. I guess the padded bag was some kind of 'deluxe bag' produced for the system after its launch.

Both the unpadded and the half-padded bags, on the contrary, seem to match the design. They are in fact pretty much the same, except for one being just a nylon sleeve, the other being lighlty padded on its 'larger' sides (front & back).

Again, according to my tracking down of Japanese and Western information, I think the unpadded bag was the original Japanese one. Hard to say if the 'half-padded' one is just a mod made by the Trieuposer or what.

It's funny how Neo Store had hundreds of unpadded ones, and not one has been seen since.